The End Result

Oh Newt… why’d you go and do that? Now you’ve given pretty much everyone who disagrees with your otherwise good philosophies to slam you. Especially all the tech companies and organizations (mostly Liberal — which I’ve always thought it was ironic given the risk for a lack of Internet freedom motivated by none other than the Liberal Party, and some ignorant republicans that I refuse to include myself with.).

I understand what he’s trying to say. That the names smartphone or cellphone just don’t do the device justice. In fact, there’s a Gizmodo article to back up that thinking. But Newt, darn it… you’re making yourself look like an idiot. It’s simply called a smartphone. The name’s been around since the ’90s. Sometimes just let the chips fall where they may and accept the name that’s been placed to it. It’s primary function is still a phone, despite it’s other awesome capabilities. So I think it’s aptly named.

Second, why didn’t anyone stop him from filming this? Or at least help him tweak the message a little more and replace “cellphone” in the script with “smartphone”? He certainly has a staff who oversees all of these videos, right? None of them said anything?

Oh well. The damage is done. And a lot more is to come. It’s too bad he made this video. I understand what he’s saying — that it’s an incredible device and has so much more potential than even what we do with it, but the message here is all wrong and instead 99%, if not more, will focus on his “unintelligible” thinking that he doesn’t know what a smartphone is, which he does — he just didn’t convey that here.

If you want to see his defensive tweets backing up the video he made, look no further than his Twitter account:

Regarding the term smartphone… twitter.com/newtgingrich/s…

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich)

May 13, 2013

.@gizmodo on ‘smartphone,’ 2008 gizmodo.com/5061705/smartp…

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich)

May 13, 2013

I thought what was said in the Update of the article at Fortune Tech was spot on:

[T]he term “smartphone” is pretty much universally used to apply to the device Gingrich was holding up in the video. But he never once used that term, even if only to argue against its use, as he did with “cellphone” and “handheld computer.” That, in fact, is what makes the video so bizarre. If it were an argument that we shouldn’t use the word “smartphone,” nobody would be making fun of the video. Or if they did make fun, it would be because the battle has already been won: it was decided years ago that “smartphone” is the term, and everybody knows what it means.